The present invention relates to a car radio having a handset that is inserted into a horizontally positioned holder in a front panel and has a display as well as labeled control keys and can be used as the control unit for the car radio or as a telephone.
A car radio having a removable control unit that is simultaneously designed as a telephone handset is known from German Patent No. 91 09 141. Because the main reason for control unit removability was to protect against theft, the design of the removable control part as a telephone was intended as an additional benefit. In this arrangement, the control and display elements can be used for both purposes. The known concept has not been generally accepted because easier-to-use electronic anti-theft system means have been introduced in the meantime. In addition, handling of the removable control part as a telephone is different from the handling of commonly known telephone sets. According to the current art, a physical connection is therefore no longer established between the car radio and telephone, with the telephone instead being mounted as a separate unit in a suitable location in the automobile. However, this gives rise to the problem that mounting the telephone handset in a holder, which also serves to charge the telephone handset, frequently means making compromises between functionality and design.